Jean Giraudoux Quotes - Page 3

The brave men die in war. It takes great luck or judgment not to be killed. Once‚ at least‚ the head has to bow and the knee has to bend to danger. The soldiers who march back under the triumphal arches are death's deserters.

Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.

I believe in the gods; or rather I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us; I believe they are completely absent minded.

Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations.

I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.

Each day the worst of our faults, our deficiencies, our crimes, the truth of our lives, is stifled under a triple layer of forgetfulness, death and the ordinary course of justice.

You're an Attorney. It's your duty to lie, conceal, and distort everything, and slander everybody.

Falsehood is the jockey of misfortune.

Their own kind of logic which cries for miracles and, on occasion.

Who would prefer peace to the glory of hunger and thirst, of wading through mud, and dying in the service of one's country?

In war-time a man is called a hero. It doesn't make him any braver, and he runs for his life. But at least it's a hero who is running away.

Countries are like fruit-the worms are always inside.

All the evil in the world is the fault of the self-styled pure in heart, a result of their eagerness to unearth secrets and expose them to the light of the sun.

Women have no sense of the abstract-a woman admiring the sky is a woman caressing the sky. In a woman's mind beauty is something she needs to touch.

A man has only one way of being immortal on earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.

Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.

The stage play is a trial, not a deed of violence. The soul is opened, like the combination of a safe, by means of a word. You don't require an acetylene torch.

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

Born enemies don't fight. Nations you would say were designed to go to war against each other by their skins, their language, their smell; always jealous of each other, always hating each other; they're not the ones who fight. You will find the real antagonists in nations fate has groomed and made ready for the same war.